In May this year, Aryna Sabalenka unleashed a new weapon: a drop shot she was willing to use far more than ever. After winning six of six drop-shot points in a Rome first-rounder against Katie Volynets, Sabalenka inflicted 28 droppers on Elina Svitolina. That match went to a third-set tiebreak, and her 15 outright drop-shot winners represented more than the margin of victory.
In her career up to that point, Sabalenka’s drop shots represented 1.1% of her (non-serve) strokes–about half the tour average of 2.2%. That rate nearly quadrupled, to 4.1%, for her eleven matches in Rome and Paris. On faster courts since, it has fallen, but not all the way back. Her drop-shot rate since June has been 1.9%. As we will see, the weapon has continued to give her more value even as she uses it less often.
The tactic makes perfect sense for a player with Sabalenka’s skills. She hits hard from the baseline, so opponents are usually positioned defensively, on the back foot. She’s capable in the forecourt (former doubles #1!), so not only does she have the touch to pull off the deception, she has the ability to deal with the rapid-fire net play that can ensue when someone runs a drop shot down.
The only question–had we thought to make the suggestion, say, a year ago–was whether the idea appealed to her. Not everyone is Carlos Alcaraz, ready to throw the tennis equivalent of a curveball into any point. Sabalenka was doing fine bashing groundstrokes into submission; why change? Now we know she’s comfortable with the tactic, even if 4% is probably reserved for the slowest courts.
How, then, does Aryna’s drop shot stack up against those of her peers, in terms of frequency, success rate, and value? I wrote two articles in March that outlined various ways of analyzing drop shot tactics. Those pieces looked at Alcaraz, Alexander Bublik, and the men’s game in general. The same approach can shed light on Sabalenka and the women’s tour, as well.
Getting the drop
All the data in this piece is based on the shot-by-shot logs from the Match Charting Project. I’ve limited the scope to the last decade. Nearly every tour-level Sabalenka match is charted, but for many other players, coverage is more limited. It’s also not necessarily random, so these numbers are approximate.
It’s also important to define “drop shot.” For the purposes of this piece, I’m looking only at the first drop shot in each point. “Re-drops” are a skill of their own, and probably a very different one. They are also tough to study because they are so much rarer than the already-uncommon standard drop shot. So we skip them for now.
Let’s start with the most prolific WTA drop-shotters since 2015. Remember that tour average is 2.2%–one dropper per 45 shots or so. Here are the thirteen women who have equaled or exceeded clay-Aryna’s 4.1% for their entire (charted) careers:
Player Drop% Yulia Putintseva 8.6% Ons Jabeur 8.2% Laura Siegemund 7.6% Anastasija Sevastova 6.6% Marketa Vondrousova 6.3% Petra Martic 5.6% Kristina Mladenovic 5.2% Su Wei Hsieh 4.5% Agnieszka Radwanska 4.2% Karolina Muchova 4.2% Kiki Bertens 4.1% Viktorija Golubic 4.1%
Everything checks out so far. Putintseva dropshots to drive you nuts, Jabeur hits them to show off, and Aga did it just because she could.
The other end of the list has its amusements as well. In over 50 charted matches, spanning over 7,000 points, Camila Giorgi hit five drop shots. Yes, five. Two of them went for winners, and she lost the other three.
More important than frequency is points won. Here are the 14 women whose career drop-shot win rates surpass Sabalenka’s recent clip of 55.6%:
Player Drop% Point W% Dominika Cibulkova 2.5% 61.4% Qinwen Zheng 2.0% 60.7% Sara Sorribes Tormo 2.3% 60.4% Ashleigh Barty 1.7% 59.5% Barbora Krejcikova 1.8% 59.0% Marketa Vondrousova 6.3% 58.7% Emma Raducanu 1.6% 58.3% Liudmila Samsonova 1.3% 58.2% Bianca Andreescu 3.2% 58.1% Anett Kontaveit 1.1% 57.4% Sofia Kenin 4.1% 57.4% Aliaksandra Sasnovich 3.3% 56.6% Sorana Cirstea 1.9% 56.3% Kiki Bertens 4.1% 56.1% … Average 2.2% 52.6% … Aryna 2017-Apr '24 1.1% 53.2% Aryna 2024 Rome/RG 4.1% 61.9% Aryna 2024 2nd half 1.9% 55.6%
There is virtually no correlation between frequency and success rate, so players like Vondrousova and Kenin (and slow-clay Sabalenka) really stand out.
Here’s the same dataset, with more players, in visual form:
Most women cluster in the 1-2% frequency range, regardless of their drop-shot skills. Vondrousova and Putintseva really stand out for their combination of frequent attempts and consistent success.
Chasing down value
As much as youngsters dream of someday showing up on a leaderboard on this blog, what really matters is winning points. You can do that by hitting tons of drop shots and winning those points at a decent rate (like Putintseva), or by choosing moments carefully and executing well (like Qinwen Zheng).
Assume for the time being that the typical drop shot is hit from a perfectly neutral position, one in which each player has a 50% chance of winning the point. Combine the two metrics we’ve seen so far–multiply frequency by the difference between winning percentage and 50%–and we have the value added by a player’s drop shots. I’ve multiplied the results by 1,000 so all the zeroes don’t make our eyes hurt.
Player Drop% Point W% Drop Pts/1000 Marketa Vondrousova 6.3% 58.7% 5.4 (Aryna 2024 Rome/RG) 4.1% 61.9% 4.9 Yulia Putintseva 8.6% 55.1% 4.4 Sofia Kenin 4.1% 57.4% 3.0 Dominika Cibulkova 2.5% 61.4% 2.9 Kiki Bertens 4.1% 56.1% 2.5 Bianca Andreescu 3.2% 58.1% 2.5 Sara Sorribes Tormo 2.3% 60.4% 2.4 Petra Martic 5.6% 54.2% 2.3 Aliaksandra Sasnovich 3.3% 56.6% 2.2 Qinwen Zheng 2.0% 60.7% 2.1 Su Wei Hsieh 4.5% 54.5% 2.0 Karolina Muchova 4.2% 54.8% 2.0 ... (Aryna 2024 2nd half) 1.9% 55.6% 1.1 Average 2.2% 52.6% 0.6 (Aryna 2017-Apr '24) 1.1% 53.2% 0.4 ... Elise Mertens 1.9% 46.1% -0.7 Sloane Stephens 1.1% 42.2% -0.8 Amanda Anisimova 2.0% 45.8% -0.9 Kristina Mladenovic 5.2% 47.1% -1.5 Laura Siegemund 7.6% 47.7% -1.7 Ons Jabeur 8.2% 47.3% -2.2
Clay may be particularly drop-shot friendly, but still, how about clay-Aryna!
At the other end of the spectrum… is Jabeur actually bad at drop shots? We need more context before we could establish any such conclusion. Perhaps the Tunisian hits droppers at particularly desperate times. Still, it’s jarring to see the star’s name at the bottom of the list.
Did someone say context?
The most common situation for a Sabalenka drop shot is when she makes a first serve and the ball comes back to her backhand. Over her entire career, when she hits a dropper with her second shot, she wins 51.1% of points. If she doesn’t go for the drop, she wins 51.8%.
Without camera-tracking data, that (and the dozen-plus analogous categories) is as far as we can drill down. Maybe the returns to the backhand that she dropshots are different from the ones she doesn’t. Match Charting Project data can’t tell us that.
Adjusting for context remains valuable even with those limitations. We can classify each drop shot by whether the player who hit it was the server or returner, whether it was a first or second serve point, whether it was a forehand or backhand-side drop shot, and how far into the rally it occurred. When Aryna waits one more shot on a first-serve point, her drop is much deadlier. Instead of the 47% of points she wins on a third shot from her backhand side with something other than a drop shot, she wins 55%.
The list looks quite a bit different when we take these additional factors into consideration. I tallied each player’s results in each of those categories, so we can compare their drop shot winning percentages with how they fared in the same mix of situations. “DSWOE” is Drop Shot Wins Over Expectation, the ratio between the two numbers:
Player Drop W% Exp W% DSWOE Dominika Cibulkova 63.5% 50.1% 1.27 Petra Martic 54.2% 42.9% 1.26 Sara Sorribes Tormo 60.4% 47.9% 1.26 Martina Trevisan 59.5% 48.7% 1.22 Marketa Vondrousova 58.7% 48.1% 1.22 Danka Kovinic 56.0% 46.1% 1.21 Sorana Cirstea 56.8% 46.8% 1.21 Kaja Juvan 58.5% 48.4% 1.21 Ashleigh Barty 59.1% 49.3% 1.20 Kiki Bertens 56.2% 47.2% 1.19 ... Average 51.3% 49.2% 1.04 ... Ons Jabeur 47.3% 47.8% 0.99 Agnieszka Radwanska 48.9% 49.9% 0.98 Maria Sakkari 48.6% 49.9% 0.97 Jelena Ostapenko 49.7% 52.9% 0.94 Caroline Wozniacki 50.0% 53.3% 0.94 Elise Mertens 46.1% 50.2% 0.92 Serena Williams 45.5% 49.8% 0.91 Amanda Anisimova 45.8% 50.4% 0.91 Sloane Stephens 44.1% 48.8% 0.90 Iga Swiatek 49.6% 56.2% 0.88
(The winning percentages here are very slightly different from the ones above because some of the data wasn’t detailed enough to be used for this calculation.)
The average rate of 1.04 seems plausible. Players generally know what they’re doing; they wouldn’t hit drop shots if they didn’t have reason to think it would improve their odds. Jabeur does indeed look better in context. She still finds herself in the bottom ten, but a DSWOE of 0.99 means that if she is costing herself anything with all the droppers, it isn’t much. It’s possible that even this more granular approach is missing some details that would explain why Ons makes the decisions she does.
I must also acknowledge the oddity of finding Swiatek at the bottom of the list–or any list. Her 49.6% drop shot win rate isn’t that bad: It’s what she does the rest of the time that is such an outlier. She isn’t known for her drop shot, and she doesn’t hit many. So as with Jabeur, it’s possible that these categories don’t capture how hopeless the situations are when she tries to drag her opponent up to the net.
This metric confirms our story about Sabalenka. Her drop shots were fine–if rare–before May, became devilishly effective on the clay, then settled back to a more modest level on faster surfaces:
Player Drop W% Exp W% DSWOE 2017-April 53.3% 51.2% 1.04 May 61.9% 51.4% 1.20 Second Half 55.6% 52.4% 1.06
Buried in the details of Aryna’s respectable 1.06 ratio since June is a particularly encouraging trend. Remember those plus-one backhands that she shouldn’t have been dropshotting? Since June, she basically stopped. Out of 108 total drop shots, those have represented only five.
Drop and roll
For someone who hits as hard as Sabalenka does, throwing in a drop shot can be about more than just winning a point. Once an opponent realizes that they might have to chase down a dropper, they are that much less focused on defending against deep groundstrokes.
That’s the idea, anyway. When I wrote about drop shots in the men’s game, I was surprised to discover that drop shots didn’t influence the outcome of subsequent points in the way I expected. The majority of drop shots are hit by servers, but after they hit one, servers are less likely to win points later in the same game. If there is any discernable pattern in the ATP data, it is that once a drop shot is played–whichever player makes the move–the returner has an edge for the rest of the game. This probably isn’t a causal relationship: Perhaps drop shots are more likely to come into play when the server is struggling to control the action.
The data for women’s tennis tells a different story. On the point after a drop shot–win or lose!–the drop-shotting player wins 51.1% of the time. Two points later, there’s still an advantage, and the edge stays in place for the remainder of the game:
Situation Win% Next point 51.1% Two points later 50.7% Same game 50.7% All others 49.9%
That advantage is not the same for every player. The following list shows the point winning percentages for players who get the biggest post-drop-shot bang for the buck, along with those who–like servers in the men’s game–see their post-drop fortunes dip.
Player Same game All others Diff Jasmine Paolini 56.5% 50.4% 6.2% Marta Kostyuk 55.9% 50.1% 5.8% Sloane Stephens 55.0% 49.9% 5.1% Beatriz Haddad Maia 53.0% 48.7% 4.3% Qinwen Zheng 54.5% 50.7% 3.8% Naomi Osaka 54.5% 50.8% 3.7% Anastasija Sevastova 53.3% 49.7% 3.7% Maria Sakkari 53.1% 49.7% 3.3% Angelique Kerber 53.8% 50.5% 3.3% Su Wei Hsieh 50.9% 47.9% 3.1% Karolina Pliskova 54.0% 51.0% 3.1% Danielle Collins 53.7% 50.7% 2.9% Marketa Vondrousova 52.8% 50.0% 2.8% Agnieszka Radwanska 54.0% 51.4% 2.5% Garbine Muguruza 53.4% 50.9% 2.5% Aryna Sabalenka 55.0% 52.5% 2.5% … Average 50.7% 49.9% 0.7% … Ons Jabeur 50.2% 50.3% 0.0% … Emma Raducanu 49.6% 51.1% -1.5% Ashleigh Barty 51.5% 53.0% -1.5% Eugenie Bouchard 48.9% 50.6% -1.7% Svetlana Kuznetsova 47.8% 49.8% -2.0% Karolina Muchova 48.6% 50.7% -2.1% Monica Niculescu 46.9% 49.1% -2.2% Barbora Krejcikova 47.4% 50.1% -2.7% Jessica Pegula 47.6% 50.6% -2.9% Lesia Tsurenko 44.5% 47.5% -3.0% Caroline Garcia 44.9% 49.6% -4.7%
Jasmine Paolini! It’s tough to pinpoint exactly what she does that has caused her improvement in 2024. Her post-drop-shot success rate is too niche a skill to account for much of it, but it’s fascinating to consider.
I added Jabeur to this list because she illustrates one of the factors that makes analyzing drop shots so complicated. As noted, the theory is that once a player hits a drop, her opponent has to start thinking about it. But against Jabeur, opponents have to think about it from the moment they step on court! One more drop shot from the wizard isn’t going to change that.
That’s just one reason why the relationships between frequency, success rate, and post-drop-shot success rate are unpredictable. Some players, like Stephens and Osaka, play droppers rarely. They don’t win much when they do. But the after-effect might make up for it. At the other end, Muchova has a great drop shot that she deploys often, and for whatever reason, her results on subsequent points suffer.
Back to Sabalenka one last time. I snuck her into the table above because, even before she hit lots of drop shots, she saw a post-drop boost. You will not be surprised to learn that those numbers have gotten better in the last six months:
Span Same game All others Diff 2017 - Apr '24 54.3% 52.3% 1.9% 2024 Rome/RG 60.2% 53.7% 6.5% 2024 2nd half 58.9% 54.2% 4.8%
Clay-Sabalenka got the best of both worlds. She won more points by playing the drop, and she won more points because of the tactic’s lingering effect. Perhaps because of her growing reputation as a drop shot queen, the effect has persisted since June, even when she doesn’t go to the well so often.
The Aryna Sabalenka path to drop shot success won’t help everybody. But no matter how we slice up the numbers, it sure has worked for her.
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